


Why did you come back?

by benchofindigo



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Fix-it fic, James is still alive, M/M, Post Treasure Island, because he wants to be, but oh well, or well I want him to be, this has probably already been done before, this is my take on it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-19 02:49:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7341568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benchofindigo/pseuds/benchofindigo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Silver is decidedly unhappy with how the events of Treasure Island turned out and just wants to wash away his sorrows in a tavern. While there, he encounters a figure from his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why did you come back?

**Author's Note:**

> I probably wouldn't have posted this, but beat-got-sica told me I should... so here it is. I'm still on the fence about it, but hopefully some of you people like it. 
> 
> Let me know what you think! :)

He makes his way to the tavern, cursing his very existence with every step taken. His crutch, a constant reminder of how weak and dependent he is. He wouldn’t have thought that he would miss the metal leg, but here he is, wishing with all of his being that his life choices did not lead to such… drastic outcomes.

He has left Captain Flint at home for tonight. It seems odd, not having her around, but he just feels the need to be on his own. It already feels like a mistake

He sits down heavily, waving for an ale. Normally he would ask for rum, but he doesn’t feel like it today. In fact, he doesn’t much prefer drinking at all, but he needs some way to get his mind off his past. Or what has taken place on the blasted voyage for that matter.

Treasure fucking Island. Wasn’t that a right bloody mess? It had been out of his control right from the start, even if it is his fault that the whole ordeal had begun. He had only wanted revenge on Billy. For being there at James’ deathbed, when he himself was not. He should have…

Fuck, he will not be thinking of that tonight. He drinks deeply, hoping the spirits will wash away his anguish.

A man comes and sits down across from him, rattling Silver’s nerves. He wants to be alone tonight.

“Mind if I sit here, mate?” the man asks. Silver glares up at him, but the man pays him no heed, like he hasn’t even asked. He takes out a wooden carving of some sorts and starts working on it. Letting the wooden chips fall to the table, creating a mess. Silver tightens his grip on his tankard, breathing through his nose. He will not be rattled, not today, not when he isn’t in the clear yet.

Max has set up shop in this unknown town, far away from everyone they have ever known. She hadn’t been happy upon seeing just how little Silver had managed to take away with him, but Silver didn’t give a damn. He hadn’t wanted to go on the voyage in the first place. It was only through Max’s cajoling and the need to keep up face that he had set out. Caused this right bloody mess, of which he is none too pleased to be in.

“Did yah hear? They found Flint’s bloody treasure, they did! Apparently it isn’t as much as they hoped for, but judging by their accounts they were lucky to have made it out alive. Apparently there are still some pirates out at large! Who would have thought?”

Silver grits his teeth. Those fucking pompous Englishmen, thinking they have any right to James’ treasure. If he had it his way, no one would have gotten the treasure. It would have remained in the ground, along with Ben Gunn. How could a one legged man stop all those men on his own though? It had been fruitless from the start.

Besides, he can barely even think about the money without wanting to retch. He would have much preferred to have left with nothing, but he knew that Max would have had his head if he had done so. He could have taken more, but thinking of having so much of that betrayal in his business, in his home, is unbearable.

“Well that’s great,” Silver mumbles. He really wishes the man will leave him alone. No such luck.

“What sort of idiots would try and steal from the crown?”

God, this man was getting on his nerves. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t care,” Silver says. He is looking for a quick exit. It is obvious that it is not the right night for him to be out.

“I find myself being quite interested.”

Silver freezes. It is like everything in his life is being torn apart and put back to pieces in a haphazard fashion. He can’t move, can’t turn around to see; see if he isn’t fucking hallucinating. See if he isn’t wrong. Oh so wrong.

A hand presses to the small of his back, and a body sits down beside him, emitting a delicious heat that his body already wants to lean into. He wants to turn his head, wants to see, but he just can’t move. The thought that he might be wrong is too terrifying. But if he is right? That is too incomprehensible to even begin to sort through.

“Tell me about this treasure.”

Fuck, it is his voice. Silver is sure of that. Before he can convince himself otherwise, he turns his head, takes in the picture beside him.

James Flint.

He is different, of course he is different. It has been years since Silver last saw him. His hair is back; it’s gently falling down just to the back of his neck. It is more grey than red now, but still looks glorious in the dim light of the tavern. Lines are deeper into his skin, giving him an almost sunken look. He has lost weight as well, no longer the same strong, able bodied man he used to be. He is still stunningly beautiful though. So fucking beautiful.

He is awashed with thousands of different emotions all at once. Confusion, anger, hurt, lust, love, thankfulness, joy, rage… He can’t decide whether he wants to punch him or jump into his arms and never let go.

Instead he just sits there, gaping at the specimen in front of him. Not believing his eyes. James is staring across the table at the other man, full attention on him. Silver feels an unnatural wave of jealousy wash over him. He should be looking at _him_. His full attention should be directly on him, not this annoying half wit who doesn’t know when to shut up.

The man leans forward, eyes gleaming. Silver wants to punch him in the face. “Well, have you heard of Captain Flint?”

James squints his eyes and looks off into the distance as if he has heard of the name, but can’t quite recall where. Silver thinks he would have snorted, but he is still too dumbstruck to do much more than just stare at him. He must look like an idiot.

James starts rubbing his thumb gently into the small of his back, sending a jolt of pleasure and want up Silver’s spine. What is the hand still doing there? Silver knows for sure that it looks too compromising for such a setting. He doesn’t dare complain lest James move it though.

“I’ve heard mentions of him, can’t say where though,” James says. The other man’s eyes alight with glee and he starts rambling off on his stupid little tale. Silver can’t bring himself to pay attention. Firstly, because of the damn distracting hand that is rubbing circles into his back, and secondly, well it’s because James fucking Flint is sitting right beside him.

Gods, he has missed him. He never admitted it to himself, but he has always felt empty ever since the events in Nassau. He had left a piece there and now, through some strange miracle, that piece is back. How though? How has he survived? How can he be here today?

James takes his hand away from his back, leaving a cold, desolate feeling in its place. Silver, irrationally, wants to claw for the hand again, put it back on his body, he doesn’t care where. James still hasn’t looked at Silver yet, staring far too intently at the other man. It is almost like Silver isn’t even there. Perhaps he isn’t, perhaps this is some portal into heaven or hell and Silver is just viewing it for a couple of minutes. If that is so, Silver never wants it to end; hell, if this is death, let him be dead.

“Most fascinating,” James breaths, and Silver almost believes him. Almost believes that James has just heard that story for the first time and does not know who Captain Flint is. But that’s impossible. He suddenly stands up and Silver feels a well of fear stir up inside of him. He can’t leave! Not yet, not ever again, he’s just got him back.

“Unfortunately, myself and my friend here have to get going,” James continues, placing a heavy hand on Silver’s shoulder. “I wish you all the best in your future travels.”

Silver has never scrambled so fast getting his crutch up. He swears he sees James flash one of his signature smirks, but it is gone before Silver can get a closer look. He has missed those too.  
James gives the man a nod, but Silver pays him no mind. He needs answers, and desperately.

Once outside, however, words fail him. Funny when, for all of his life, words have always been his main weapon. Now, he can’t remember how they work. James becomes a changed man outside too. No longer the confident, brash man he was just mere seconds ago. Now he walks slowly beside Silver, hands fumbling with the rings on his fingers, eyes on the ground. The fondness that runs through Silver nearly staggers him.

After a couple of minutes of slow walking, Silver finally manages to find one word — “How?”

It is several long moments before James responds, and even then, the answer is unsatisfactory, “I’m not really sure.”

Something breaks inside of Silver. “You’re not really sure? _You’re not really sure?_ Don’t give that bullshit to me.”

James laughs, it is a cruel laugh that raises the hairs on Silver’s skin. “What do you want me to say? You were the one who left me.”

Silver feels like he has been punched in the gut. How can he get mad at James when it is all his fault? His greed, his anger, his _madness_ that is the cause of all of his own misery. Forcing him to deal with the consequences that he has strewn throughout these cold hard years. James had been right, power did have its limits, and Silver had forced those limits to well past the breaking point and then some. And after all that? Well how could he have stayed then? He couldn’t, so he left, looking out for only his own survival, while leaving James without the intention of ever turning back. Leaving James to nothing but cold darkness and ruin… So why on earth did James come back?

He looks over at James, really takes him in. There is something in his eyes, something that Silver cannot quite make out. A shiftiness, an uncertainty. It hits Silver that he has forgotten some of James’ tells, forgotten what some of his little quirks are. It is this knowledge that hurts the most. It is then that Silver realizes that he doesn’t care _how_ James survived, he wants to know _why_.

“Why are you here?”

It seems this breaks the damn that James has been holding in. With a growl, he leaps forward, pressing Silver’s body against a wall, lips harsh and demanding against his own. Oh, is all Silver can think, oh.

It is all Silver can do to just hold on. Hold on as James bites down forcefully on his bottom lip till Silver is certain that blood is drawn. Hold on as James licks his way into his mouth and claims it as his own. Hold on as James’ hands yank at his hair, holding his face in place as he presses their bodies ever closer together. He tries, at first, to fight back in a way — not to stop, no god no, never to stop, but to gain some even territory, make this an equal give and exchange. In the end, he just gives in. Let’s his mouth, his body, be dominated by the only person he has ever loved. By the only person he loves.

Eventually the harsh licks and bites ebbs back, till they just trade gentle kisses back and forth, neither wanting to break apart. Neither wanting to let go. Silver doesn’t know when he starts crying, but his face is wet with shed tears. James reaches up and brushes them away gently, hands alternating between cradling his face to running through his hair. James has always loved his hair, one of the reasons Silver has kept it, even though he is told countless times that it isn’t professional. Not for England that is.

Silver’s own hands are just cradling around James’ neck; he is still too paralyzed to comprehend that this is actually happening. Scared that if he actually starts exploring, James will just disappear into the dust. Just a horrible hallucination made to mock him.

As if sensing Silver’s worries, James pulls back a tiny bit, looking into Silver’s eyes for the first time. It takes Silver’s breath away, those beautiful green orbs that have seen far too much, witnessed far too many cruelties. “I’m here,” he breaths, gently rubbing another fallen tear into Silver’s cheek.

“I don’t understand,” Silver says. He wants answers, he wants the world to make sense again.

James smiles sadly. “I needed to get away. You… hurt me, beyond imagining, and I feared I was going to bring about my ruin through drink. At the time I would have welcomed it…”

“But?” Silver can’t help himself, he is impatient. He needs to know how James is here, why he is here.

“But, something stopped me. I can’t say what, but I knew it wasn’t my time to go yet.”

They fall into silence, Silver not knowing what to say, and James, well, Silver has no fucking clue what James is thinking. The question still running through Silver’s brain, though, is why is he here? Why is he still interested in Silver? After everything, how is that possible? For after all, that is what he is here for, right?

“When I heard about the trip to find my treasure, I knew it was time for me to return,” James says.

“Why?” Silver asks, it is all Silver can ask at this point.

James smiles, hands going back to Silver’s hair, gently pulling at the curls. Silver wants to lose himself in the feeling, but his need for answers is more urgent. Finally, James speaks, “Because I knew then that Billy was dead. That your men had found him, driven him mad most likely, and that you were going to find it, even if you knew it was a bad idea.”

Silver feels sick to the stomach. “I only sent them after Billy because I wanted him dead for being there when you died. I wanted him dead for not saving you, for not doing his job. The only way to urge my men to find him was through the idea of finding your treasure. I didn’t want it.” He then stutters to a stop, realization washing over him. “If you aren’t dead, then I had men kill someone who I thought of as a former friend, for nothing.”

James snorts softly. “He knew what would happen to him if he agreed to go with my plan, yet he still agreed to do it. I think he was ready to die.”

“Not from my point of view. It took ages for my men to even catch a whiff of his whereabouts,” Silver argues, he will not have James try and make right a wrong that Silver has committed. Facing his only true desire in the world, he is through with pitting his misdeeds on others.

“Even when one accepts death, it can still be hard for them to go through with it. Besides, it would look suspicious if they found him right away, would it not?”

Silver nods, thinking over what has taken place, that remembrance brings a scowl to his features. “Of course it had to be the good old fucking English who found the map. Couldn’t have been my men, I would have gotten rid of it somehow, but them? The only thing I could think of was joining the crew.”

James smiles. “I know.”

Silver doesn’t want James acceptance though. He has failed him, in a most gruesome fashion. “They have it! The English have your treasure again and they were never supposed to. I may have betrayed you in the worst way possible, but I would never have done that to you. I never wanted that to happen.” Tears are once again falling down his face. He hates himself for being so weak, both in this moment, and on that blasted voyage. In the end, however, his need for survival had won out over everything and here he was, a failure in the one thing that mattered the most.

“It’s okay,” James says. He leans forward and plants a tender kiss on Silver’s forehead, then another two on his cheeks, before finally reaching Silver’s mouth again. Just a soft press of lips on lips that makes Silver feel whole once again, yet breaks him into a million pieces. He doesn’t understand, he can’t understand.

“I don’t care about that anymore. It holds nothing of value, nothing that I want,” James says when he breaks apart. Silver can’t comprehend what James is trying to say. It holds an insurmountable value.

“How is Max?” James asks suddenly, the change of topic jars Silver.

“She’s fine I guess… busy with setting up shop again and looking after Jack with Anne.”

James smiles, “So that is what they named the child?”

“What else would they name him?”

James shrugged, “what if he had been a girl?”

Silver opens his mouth, then frowns, confounded once again. “How the fuck should I know? It’s not my child.”

James smirks and leans in to kiss Silver again. Silver presses his hands into the back of James’ head to hold the smirk into his lips. Gods he has wanted this for so long, and… oh gods! The hair! Silver has never had the opportunity to be able to run his fingers through the silky strands. James had kept it shorn throughout their time together. At the time, Silver hadn’t really thought of what he was missing, now though, oh this is just glorious. Silver can just imagine spending hours running his fingers through the strands, pulling and teasing as he pleases. Fuck, James is a bastard for denying this from him before.

Silver must have given a particularly hard tug on his hair because James pulls back, much to Silver’s disappointment. “Don’t make me cut it off again.”

Silver whines, he literally whines, pushing his body against James’, even though there already is hardly any space between them. “Please don’t.”

James chuckles, low in his throat. He then pulls back farther, looking at Silver in concern. Warning bells go off in Silver’s head. He can’t have James doubt now, can’t have him leave again… well leave he should say. Silver is the one who left last time.

“Is this alright to do?”

Silver frowns, “do what?”

“This,” James says, gesturing between the two of them, “kiss.”

“Why the fuck wouldn’t it be?” As far as Silver is concerned, James can do whatever the hell he wants to him. Silver doesn’t deserve to have James back, so he is going to take whatever he can get. Why James even wants to kiss him for that matter still puzzles Silver. For all accounts James should hate him, if James had done to Silver, what he had done to James, he would have never forgiven him, much less let James kiss him. Silver dares not bring that up, though, lest this stops, whatever this is.

James visibly relaxes, “so there is no… other?”

Silver actually lets out a laugh of relief. “God no! As if… how… it has only ever been you. It will only ever be you.”

James lets out a little whimper and buries his face in Silver’s neck. Silver clings onto James; he can’t quite believe that he has admitted that, but it is the truth. There will never be anyone for him but James. He doubts he can bring his heart to even begin to muster a sense of companionship for someone else. It is not how Silver works. Then a thought comes to Silver and it freezes him.  
Perhaps all James wants here is closure, perhaps he just wants to say a final goodbye. Silver will not survive that if that is the case. “Will you stay?” he asks, his voice is high pitched and pitiful. He sounds weak, but at the moment he doesn’t care; if he can’t be his true self around James, then he might as well not exist.

James pulls his head back up and stares into Silver’s eyes; the green circles a tirade of emotions that Silver realizes he can’t sort through. He has been away too long.

“John.”

Silver’s breath catches from the way James says his name. Like it actually deserves to be said. Not Silver, or Long John Silver, or even Barbeque, just John, like Silver deserves to have his first name be spoken in such an intimate fashion. That isn’t just it, though, no, James says it like he loves Silver, like Silver is his everything. He still doesn’t understand.

“John, if you’ll have me, nothing will give me greater pleasure than staying with you for the rest of my life.”

Upon those words, Silver’s body gives out. His one leg, folding under the pressure. If it isn’t for James’ body pressing against his own, Silver would surely have fallen to the ground. James, however, carefully catches him and helps him retrieve his crutch, which somehow ended up on the ground.

“Please stay,” Silver says, voice cracking at the end. James smiles in return, nodding his head. That is all Silver needs.

They still have so much to sort through, they still need to talk things over, clarify, forgive, be forgiven. For tonight, though, they’ll head on back to Silver’s place, relearn each other’s bodies. Explore how they have changed, how they haven’t... rediscover what they have forgotten. Tonight will be a night of love and acceptance, joy and curiosity.

Tonight, they are reunited, and that is all that matters.


End file.
